Fantaspoa, the largest genre film festival in Latin America, will kick off in Brazil next month with a live-scored centenary anniversary screening of The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney and has unveiled a line-up of more than 100 features.
Running April 9-27 in Porto Alegre, the 21st edition brings international premieres for Annapurna Sriram’s freshly minted SXSW special jury award winner Fucktoys, Marko Mäkilaakso’s Finnish monster horror homage The Creeps, and Toby Jones’ Fantastic Fest premiere AJ Goes To The Dog Park.
Latin American premieres bring sci-fi satire Rich Flu from Spain’s Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, the director behind 2019 TIFF hit The Platform, and psychological dramas Three from pioneering UAE female filmmaker Nayla Al Khaja and Don’t Leave The Kids Alone, the recent Rotterdam premiere from Mexican director Emilio Porte.
There are world premieres for Brazilian filmmakers including Julio Cesar Napoli’s The Embodiment, Alex Buck’s Pyramids, Armando Fonseca’s Old Teeth, Fabio Brasil’s Ash Wednesday, and Soulcatcher from Nelson Botter Jr. and Fernando Alonso, as well as Discordia from Belgian Matthieu Reynaert, a co-writer on 2012 Cannes Un Certain Regard selection Our Children.
This year’s festival will take place at five theatrical venues and a portion of the short film programme will be available exclusively for viewers in Brazil for free on the Darkflix+ streaming platform.
Festival directors João Fleck, João Teixeira, and Nicolas Tonsho said, “We could not be prouder of the programme we have put together, having received over 1,300 entries for this edition. Over 90% of our entries came directly from FilmFreeway submissions and we selected 18% of all submitted films. Factors that influenced our title selection were overall quality, diversity, and cultural relevance.”
Fantaspoa’s line-up of events includes Q&As and workshops for the audience. All in all 61 countries are represented in the festival. There are 11 world, 12 international, 47 Latin American, 19 Brazilian, and nine regional premieres.
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